A suggestion of a feature to scheduled flights

[Aleksi Laine]

Pilot 1 is in pro Career mode, is just starting out, and flies his ATR to EGNT
Pilot 2 is in pro Career mode and well into his career, flies his 737 to EGNT
Pilot 2 then sees an ATR parked there, and takes that for a flight somewhere.
Pilot 1 is stuck at EGNT with a 737 that he doesn't have a license to fly.

That's exactly my problem. But, as Barthe pointed out, pilot's can take off from anywhere they like, right? They don't have to depart from the previous flight's arrival airport, even when in professional career? So Pilot 1 could just imagine that they take a jumpseat ride to catch the next flight from some other airport?

But couldn't pilot 1 avoid this problem by planning and registering his/her flight from EGNT ahead before signing off for the night He/she would have 3 days to claim the ATR before any other pilot can "steal" it.

Good point. But is it really 3 days? The manual gives conflicting information. First it says:
"Booked flights that are not reported within one day will be automatically cancelled and are then free
again for booking."
Then:
"Again: You must report a booked flight within 3 days; otherwise the booking will be automatically cancelled."
I'd like to know which one is correct

 

[Peter Schindler]

3 days is correct. Right now I don't know where in the manual it says 1 day but it's wrong and will be corrected with the next version.

 

[Andrew Williams]

Pilot 1 is in pro Career mode, is just starting out, and flies his ATR to EGNT
Pilot 2 is in pro Career mode and well into his career, flies his 737 to EGNT
Pilot 2 then sees an ATR parked there, and takes that for a flight somewhere.
Pilot 1 is stuck at EGNT with a 737 that he doesn't have a license to fly.

That's exactly my problem. But, as Barthe pointed out, pilot's can take off from anywhere they like, right? They don't have to depart from the previous flight's arrival airport, even when in professional career?

Sure that is correct as things stand right now.
I was showing the problem that would arise if pilots had to depart from where they landed, and had to fly an aircraft from where it is parked.

Though I do like the idea of forward planning and booking the return journey once you land (with the need to fly it within the 3 days)
Maybe if you don't plan and get stranded, you could be 'charged' pilot points to be returned back to your hub :think: (obviously won't apply to the basic career mode)

 

[Aleksi Laine]

Though I do like the idea of forward planning and booking the return journey once you land (with the need to fly it within the 3 days)
Maybe if you don't plan and get stranded, you could be 'charged' pilot points to be returned back to your hub (obviously won't apply to the basic career mode)

I like your idea. Adds even more challenge. But yeah probably would apply to professional only.

I am currently working on a tool for myself to help me plan my flights ahead so I would have a better idea of where I'm going and where I could go. If I manage to create it the way I've planned I can much more easily plan a route where I fly for example from A to D by taking Plane 1 from A and flying it to B where I switch to Plane 2 and fly it to C where Plane 3 waits for me to fly to D. I'm pretty happy of this idea I got

 

[Anders Fasterholt Theut]

Pilot 1 is in pro Career mode, is just starting out, and flies his ATR to EGNT
Pilot 2 is in pro Career mode and well into his career, flies his 737 to EGNT
Pilot 2 then sees an ATR parked there, and takes that for a flight somewhere.
Pilot 1 is stuck at EGNT with a 737 that he doesn't have a license to fly.

That's exactly my problem. But, as Barthe pointed out, pilot's can take off from anywhere they like, right? They don't have to depart from the previous flight's arrival airport, even when in professional career?

Sure that is correct as things stand right now.
I was showing the problem that would arise if pilots had to depart from where they landed, and had to fly an aircraft from where it is parked.

Though I do like the idea of forward planning and booking the return journey once you land (with the need to fly it within the 3 days)
Maybe if you don't plan and get stranded, you could be 'charged' pilot points to be returned back to your hub :think: (obviously won't apply to the basic career mode)

I am generally not fond of charging or deducting points from completed flights. I would rather like a system that rewards accuracy and planning instead of punishing the pilots.

If we want absolute realism (maybe in a new ultra-professional career) then you should just report in for a shift at your hub and then get mandatory flights assigned to you

 

[Szymon Kurzacz]

Currently Advanced and Pro career are quite detailed, onle "economy" model for whole airline is missing... But in my oponion easiest thing to add, if we must promote more advanced career modes would be just to add more points for flights if pilot fly under more advanced rules. And planning etc. is included if someone want fly more advanced. Anyway for me - fast flight, no planing, gps from A to B, even direct, not watching too much for everything... But on vatsim more planing, actual routes for AIRAC cycles, weather, alternates, route, time planning, much more details and no tactical landings, especially under controlled airspace.

Hint:
Basic career - normal points per flight.
Advanced career - +1 point per flight.
Pro career - +2 points per flight.

Also considering instructor stuff or flying school is possible... Like VATSIM plans for adding pilot tratings (like controller ones, but not mandatory for pilots) - if we manage to have some instructors it may grant aditional benefits, like special signature for that person...

Last thing - watching Kai, we definetly need to rething ranks vs points (again)

 

[Aleksi Laine]

Hi Szymon,

I am totally with you on the idea that flying under more strict rules would result in more points, however, my opinion is that following the schedule should be an essential requirement for those points. This schedule could be in FS time or real-world UTC.

Br.
Aleksi

 

[Szymon Kurzacz]

And how about (quite easy to implement) system of rewards/achievements to get, like making 1, 10, 50, 100, 500 flights, etc.? Something like we can see in most mmo/rpg in flash based games (mostly from facebook)...

For sure we could get:
number of flights
number of hours
number of miles flown
usage of airplanes (flights, miles, hours per airplane type)
usage of hubs (flights, miles, hours per hub: counted if fying from and/or to hub airport)

above variations for each career type are also possible (eg. flying 25 flights in basic, then flying 25 in adv, then flying 25 in pro = 3 achievements)...

"getting all other achievements" achievement is last, and could be put on signature...

Something like that should be possible to do... (fast thinking in middle of the night)

 

[Tom Weber]

Hmm, are you really not happy with the career mode of our VA? I think there is already enough in the career mode if you want to go for it. And believe me nothing is easy to implement in such a complex system and server place is not for free. I for myself believe that it is better to save that money and time to fly for Air-Child and collecting miles and money for the charity idea.
Just my opinion! My POV.
Cheers Tom

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

For sure we could get:
number of flights
number of hours
number of miles flown
usage of airplanes (flights, miles, hours per airplane type)
usage of hubs (flights, miles, hours per hub: counted if fying from and/or to hub airport)

Except for airplanes and hubs you can see these statistics in "my Profile". No badges, though. FSX has medals and badges for flying hours etc. built in.

I like the idea of badges/rewards. I was thinking about tour badges myself. But only the programmers know if this would slow down the site much or add the chances of errors and server crashes.

Thinking about game design, achievements are mostly fun when they unlock something. Like a higher rank unlocks bigger aircraft. But what else is there to unlock? Points? Salary? That would fit into the economics part of course.

The real problem is the nature of simulators; adding game elements to them is very hard to do and the user can easily cheat.

 

[Aleksi Laine]

Hmm, are you really not happy with the career mode of our VA?

Hi Tom, for my part I need to make clear that I am happy with the careers and the options this VA presents. These are mere suggestions that I, and some others, think might make it even better. I've only done some very basic programming so I don't have much insight on how complicated any change might be or what kind of impact it might have on performance, so I very well understand if some or all of my propositions are discarded for those reasons. Or any other reason for that matter it's not my VA

For sure we could get:
number of flights
number of hours
number of miles flown
usage of airplanes (flights, miles, hours per airplane type)
usage of hubs (flights, miles, hours per hub: counted if fying from and/or to hub airport)

Yeah, I like the idea, especially if one could get badges for each achievement, that would be shown in the signature (not very big though). And for Bartho's idea of tour badges, how about getting badges for flying complete schedules of planes. Or you could get a badge for flying 1, 5, 20, 50 schedules etc. And of course in all cases getting a higher badge would replace the previous one.

Geez, this thread is a pile of ideas :lol: they should be compiled. And again, there being all these suggestions for "improvement" does not mean that we're unhappy with the VA. At least I'm not. If I was, there would be many others for me

 

[Szymon Kurzacz]

I was thinking about something like "star rating", and that can be done in sig. Using bronze, silver and gold stars for achievements it can be told, that pilot X have 3 bronze, 5 silver and 1 gold star rating.

I know some stuff bout programing and how overall scripts here work, but some stuff will be hard to implement, and other not. Probably most resource-eating would be to run script(s) updating "old" members achievements/badges, because for new pilots is just to add when uploading pirep...

Another problem is to exclude faulty data generated (mostly) by FsAcars and one of easiest ways to do that is just to remove FsAcars from our list. XAcars is designed to work with both XPL and FS on Windows, Mac and Linux, but it not keep flown distance, have sometimes connection problems and do not catch any mayday situations (after emergency landing on airport other than planned it will end flight with already flown distance and time, but will be counted as finished on original destination airport).

Someone told about exchange those achievements or badges for something more "valuable", but i would say nNO for that one. Just getting badges is reward itself, and You can always tell that You scored all badges or something like that. That kind of badges/achievements can be counted easily over 100. Math for that is to multiply, and we can have high multiplier per each badge:
2 - online or offline
5 - levels of badge (beginner [like 1 flight], easy [10], medium [50], hard [100], extreme [500])
3 - levels of career during getting badge
probably also type of charter/scheduled, witch give 2 more...
Overall its 2*5*3*2=60 types of each badge calling:
made 1/10/50/100/500 begginer career online charter flights
"made 500 proffesional career online scheduled flights with DHC-7" sounds nice

I'm beginig to think that those badges are not good idea to implement... those combinations are big numbers